1939 comics & history show and tell 4 4

[Knightsofold]

6 hours ago, Zolnerowich said:

(It’s never a great idea — no, actually it’s a really reeealy bad idea — to follow a Bedrock phantasmagory of absolutely awe-inspiring rare high grade comic books, but I’ll post anyhow!)

Ahem,

In 1939 the Eisner/Iger shop was firing on all cylinders. Fiction House and Fox were major beneficiaries, with Lou Fine in the middle of it all. Here’s a couple offerings that I didn’t see posted yet in this thread.

Those colors look really great!!  Thanks for showing them!

Can you talk a little more about Fox studios at the time?

And when did Mr. Fine leave?  Most I know is from the Joe Simon Biography and bits and pieces from the web. 

[Zolnerowich]

On 11/21/2017 at 3:14 AM, Knightsofold said:

Those colors look really great!!  Thanks for showing them!

Can you talk a little more about Fox studios at the time?

And when did Mr. Fine leave?  Most I know is from the Joe Simon Biography and bits and pieces from the web. 

One of the best non-fiction books about the early age of comics is "Men of Tomorrow" by Gerard Jones (2004). I highly recommend.

The history of Fox is pretty legendary, involving a publisher/huckster (Victor Fox), his idea to create a new Superman-like character, the talents of the Eisner-Iger shop furnishing said character (Wonder Man, in Wonder Comics #1, on sale March 17, 1939; cover date May 1939), a legal battle with Detective Comics over copyright infringement, and a cease-and-desist order by the court. There's a lot of other fascinating stuff about Fox, but for the sake of sitting down to dinner on time, I would refer you to that book by Gerard Jones.

But I can share a little bit more about the early days of the Eisner-Iger shop, specifically about something I always found confusing -- the first comic book published by Fiction House was Jumbo Comics #1 (on sale July 12, 1938), but as per Grand Comics Database, almost all of the stories in that issue were reprints from various issues in 1937 and early 1938 from a publication titled "Wags [UK] (Editors Press Service, 1937 series)," well before Jumbo Comics #1. So what's up with that? Well...

Iger hired a young Eisner (age 19) in 1936 to be his production manager for a comic title ("Wow, What a Magazine!"), which was produced at minimal expense in the back of a New York City sweatshop. This racket folded after a couple issues, but then not long after, Eisner reached out to Iger, proposing they go into business together, in which they would create new comics material for magazine publishers. At that point in time, Iger had established one influential connection, Mr. Joshua B. Powers, who claimed to have been a former secret agent but was now taking advantage of his foreign contacts to set up new publishing deals overseas.  Powers purchased the rights of comic strips such as Mutt and Jeff and Tracy, packaging them for distribution in Great Britain, Australia, and South America, and assembled these into the magazine "Wags." Things were going swimmingly for Powers and his comics operation until he had a falling out with one of his partners, leaving Powers without access to British comic strip material. Powers now needed to find original, cheap comic strips, and somehow or other, it was the Eisner-Iger team who was contracted to supply Powers with new stories and art. The Eisner-Iger original work appeared in Wags [UK] from about April 1937 to November 1938, and artists in the Eisner-Iger stable who provided material for Wags [UK] included such soon-to-be influential artists as Bernard Baily, Briefer, Lou Fine, Bob Kane, Jack Kirby, and Mort Meskin, and Eisner of course.

So then fast forward to 1939 (perhaps late 1938), when Iger comes calling at the office of Thurman T. Scott, the publisher of Fiction House, which specialized in pulp magazines, including Fight Stories, Wings, Jungle Stories, and Planet Stories (notice any trend here...?). Thurman T. Scott obviously liked what Iger had to offer, and decided to try his hand at the comics. The first of these was Jumbo Comics (note: there was no 'Jumbo Stories' pulp title) under the imprint, Real Adventures Publishing Company, on sale July 12, 1938 (cover date Sept. 1938). It's not clear to me whether Scott was aware that his new Jumbo Comics contained about 90% recycled material from Wags [UK]. Across the first 8 issues of Jumbo Comics (Sept. 1938 to June-July 1939), the only original material to be found in Jumbo Comics was mostly 0.5-page or 1-page filler stories and text. It is clear that by the time the Eisner-Iger shop was getting Jumbo Comics #8 ready for Fiction House, the shop had basically run out of their Wags [UK] material, and had to dip into another continent to pad out the issue, using Wags [Australia] material. I've read elsewhere that one reason for all of the artist pseudonyms (for example, Will Eisner might be "Will Eisner" or "Willis B. Rensie" or "Erwin" or "Carl Heck" or "Major Thorpe," many of which might be attached to a different story in the same issue of Jumbo Comics) was to leave the impression that the Eisner-Iger shop had a deep pool of talented artists and story tellers who could generate endless amounts of "new" material.

Interestingly, the first issue of Jumbo Comics that contained all new material, without anything lifted from Wags [UK] or Wags [Australia] , was issue #11. And with issue #12, the Fiction House symbol icon first appeared on the cover. In late 1939 Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, the publisher of Quality Comics, which also had been publishing reprinted material, hired Eisner to produce, write, and draw his own feature (The Spirit) as a comic book insert in the newspapers. Eisner paid off Iger for his half of the studio, and was able to bring some artists with him to Quality Comics, including Lou Fine, where they and other excellent artists (including Jack Cole) built up new material for their line of comic books.

I think this early history of Fiction House and Jumbo Comics really illustrates the realities of the Eisner-Iger shop in its earliest days: these two gentleman (though mostly Eisner) had an eye for amazing talent, and they sparked a paradigm shift in the comic medium, despite the fact that their shop was obviously understaffed and stretched very thin. 

(Much of the above paraphrased and collated from Men of Tomorrow, Gerard Jones 2004; The Lou Fine Comics Treasury 1991; Grand Comics Database)

 

 

[Scrooge]

Excellent summary. 

Elsewhere you can also read that: "When Eisner began printing his WAGS material in the US comics such as JUMBO COMICS whose first issue was completely WAGS material and to do this he bought the original WAGS plates back from Powers and printed the artwork for JUMBO the same size as WAGS to reduce costs, but it didn't catch on with US comic buyers and he gave up [..]" That's a fun fact to know and understand why the first issues of Jumbo were over-sized and the title corresponded to the demands of the original printing of the stories overseas and thereby not copying of the many popular Fiction House pulp titles.

[Knightsofold]

2 hours ago, Zolnerowich said:

One of the best non-fiction books about the early age of comics is "Men of Tomorrow" by Gerard Jones (2004). I highly recommend.

The history of Fox is pretty legendary, involving a publisher/huckster (Victor Fox), his idea to create a new Superman-like character, the talents of the Eisner-Iger shop furnishing said character (Wonder Man, in Wonder Comics #1, on sale March 17, 1939; cover date May 1939), a legal battle with Detective Comics over copyright infringement, and a cease-and-desist order by the court. There's a lot of other fascinating stuff about Fox, but for the sake of sitting down to dinner on time, I would refer you to that book by Gerard Jones.

But I can share a little bit more about the early days of the Eisner-Iger shop, specifically about something I always found confusing -- the first comic book published by Fiction House was Jumbo Comics #1 (on sale July 12, 1938), but as per Grand Comics Database, almost all of the stories in that issue were reprints from various issues in 1937 and early 1938 from a publication titled "Wags [UK] (Editors Press Service, 1937 series)," well before Jumbo Comics #1. So what's up with that? Well...

Iger hired a young Eisner (age 19) in 1936 to be his production manager for a comic title ("Wow, What a Magazine!"), which was produced at minimal expense in the back of a New York City sweatshop. This racket folded after a couple issues, but then not long after, Eisner reached out to Iger, proposing they go into business together, in which they would create new comics material for magazine publishers. At that point in time, Iger had established one influential connection, Mr. Joshua B. Powers, who claimed to have been a former secret agent but was now taking advantage of his foreign contacts to set up new publishing deals overseas.  Powers purchased the rights of comic strips such as Mutt and Jeff and Tracy, packaging them for distribution in Great Britain, Australia, and South America, and assembled these into the magazine "Wags." Things were going swimmingly for Powers and his comics operation until he had a falling out with one of his partners, leaving Powers without access to British comic strip material. Powers now needed to find original, cheap comic strips, and somehow or other, it was the Eisner-Iger team who was contracted to supply Powers with new stories and art. The Eisner-Iger original work appeared in Wags [UK] from about April 1937 to November 1938, and artists in the Eisner-Iger stable who provided material for Wags [UK] included such soon-to-be influential artists as Bernard Baily, Briefer, Lou Fine, Bob Kane, Jack Kirby, and Mort Meskin, and Eisner of course.

So then fast forward to 1939 (perhaps late 1938), when Iger comes calling at the office of Thurman T. Scott, the publisher of Fiction House, which specialized in pulp magazines, including Fight Stories, Wings, Jungle Stories, and Planet Stories (notice any trend here...?). Thurman T. Scott obviously liked what Iger had to offer, and decided to try his hand at the comics. The first of these was Jumbo Comics (note: there was no 'Jumbo Stories' pulp title) under the imprint, Real Adventures Publishing Company, on sale July 12, 1938 (cover date Sept. 1938). It's not clear to me whether Scott was aware that his new Jumbo Comics contained about 90% recycled material from Wags [UK]. Across the first 8 issues of Jumbo Comics (Sept. 1938 to June-July 1939), the only original material to be found in Jumbo Comics was mostly 0.5-page or 1-page filler stories and text. It is clear that by the time the Eisner-Iger shop was getting Jumbo Comics #8 ready for Fiction House, the shop had basically run out of their Wags [UK] material, and had to dip into another continent to pad out the issue, using Wags [Australia] material. I've read elsewhere that one reason for all of the artist pseudonyms (for example, Will Eisner might be "Will Eisner" or "Willis B. Rensie" or "Erwin" or "Carl Heck" or "Major Thorpe," many of which might be attached to a different story in the same issue of Jumbo Comics) was to leave the impression that the Eisner-Iger shop had a deep pool of talented artists and story tellers who could generate endless amounts of "new" material.

Interestingly, the first issue of Jumbo Comics that contained all new material, without anything lifted from Wags [UK] or Wags [Australia] , was issue #11. And with issue #12, the Fiction House symbol icon first appeared on the cover. In late 1939 Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, the publisher of Quality Comics, which also had been publishing reprinted material, hired Eisner to produce, write, and draw his own feature (The Spirit) as a comic book insert in the newspapers. Eisner paid off Iger for his half of the studio, and was able to bring some artists with him to Quality Comics, including Lou Fine, where they and other excellent artists (including Jack Cole) built up new material for their line of comic books.

I think this early history of Fiction House and Jumbo Comics really illustrates the realities of the Eisner-Iger shop in its earliest days: these two gentleman (though mostly Eisner) had an eye for amazing talent, and they sparked a paradigm shift in the comic medium, despite the fact that their shop was obviously understaffed and stretched very thin. 

(Much of the above paraphrased and collated from Men of Tomorrow, Gerard Jones 2004; The Lou Fine Comics Treasury 1991; Grand Comics Database)

 

 

Thank you very much for sharing that!!  I'll be picking up that book.

[Zolnerowich]

On 11/27/2017 at 12:24 AM, Scrooge said:

Excellent summary. 

Elsewhere you can also read that: "When Eisner began printing his WAGS material in the US comics such as JUMBO COMICS whose first issue was completely WAGS material and to do this he bought the original WAGS plates back from Powers and printed the artwork for JUMBO the same size as WAGS to reduce costs, but it didn't catch on with US comic buyers and he gave up [..]" That's a fun fact to know and understand why the first issues of Jumbo were over-sized and the title corresponded to the demands of the original printing of the stories overseas and thereby not copying of the many popular Fiction House pulp titles.

Very cool! Fascinating additional back-story.

[Electricmastro]

Iron Skull, the first cyborg superhero: